SERMON V.

THE BACKSLIDER.

HOSEA xiv. 1, 2, 3.

"O Israel, return unto the Lord thy God; for thou hast fallen by thine iniquity. Take with you words, and turn to the Lord; say unto Him, Take away all iniquity, and receive us graciously: so will we render the calves of our lips. Asshur shall not save us; we will not ride upon horses; neither will we say any more to the work of our hands, 'Ye are our gods; for in Thee the fatherless findeth mercy."

THERE is something about the book of the Prophet Hosea, which renders it a peculiarly blessed book to the soul of the sin-convinced and penitent man. Such a man feels, while perusing this book, that he is reading the recorded language of one who had tasted the bitterness of departure from God, but who had also tasted the surpassing sweetness, the

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indescribable blessedness of pardon and return. It is this power of speaking to the hearts of those who have for a season fallen from God, and have felt that spiritual darkness which results from the hiding of His gracious countenance, that constitutes the chief charm of this minor Prophet. Isaiah possesses a sublimer diction; Ezekiel a bolder and more fervid eloquence; and many of his brother Prophets a richer, and more glowing vein of imagery; but in all the writings of the "holy men of God, who spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost," no where do we trace such tender thoughts, such deep pathos, or such affecting appeals as in the scripture of the Prophet from which we have taken our text. The book bears upon it the internal evidence of its being the message of "a man sent from God." We feel, as we read it, that the Prophet's language is not his own, but that it is God Himself speaking to us, and pleading with us through His commissioned servant, to renounce our wanderings, and return to Him.

We have before remarked, while addressing you from this place, that we think our Church has acted well and wisely in setting apart particular days and seasons for the special

contemplation of the leading facts and features of the Gospel scheme of salvation. Christianity is a religion of facts. The Incarnation, the Death, the Resurrection, and the Ascension into glory of the Lord Jesus Christ, are the great facts on which the Christian scheme is founded and although we admit that it is quite possible to assent to the facts without comprehending their fulness; or, in other words, to arrive at intellectual clearness, and mental accuracy in reference to the great articles of Christian belief, without a spiritual discernment of their meaning and momentousness, yet we maintain that it is of immense importance that our thoughts should be directed at particular times to particular points of Christian faith.

We have now arrived at that season of the year, when our Church, by bringing prominently before its members the great doctrine of repentance, would seek to solemnize and prepare their minds for the approaching commemoration of that most crowning act of love, the atoning death of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. At no time should such a subject be deemed unseasonable, or an apology be needed for introducing it to the notice of a Christian Congregation; still

less at a period when the orderly arrangement of the Church points so expressly to the topic. May He, God, the Holy Ghost, the alone Author of genuine, evangelical repentance, be pleased to be present among us this day, while we consider, from the text, who they are who are invited to return to God: and in what way they are directed to return to Him.

I. First, let us consider, who they are who are invited to return to God.

The invitation is addressed to Israel, but not to Israel proud and prosperous, occupying a high and commanding position among the kingdoms of the earth; but to Israel feeble and fallen, sunk in the most abject misery and degradation. Do we mourn over the fall of one, who, by what is called a reverse of fortune, has been suddenly precipitated from the topmost pinnacle of wealth and greatness, and are we touched with a more than common emotion if he did honour to the circle in which he moved, and dignified by the exercise of many virtues the exalted station which he once occupied? Do we sigh as we survey his present condition, made more miserable by contrast with the past; and do we feel that he has a claim upon our sympathy

beyond that of others, who have never stood so high, and cannot therefore have fallen so low? This may serve to give us a faint idea of the feelings of tender, yearning pity with which God is represented as surveying the fallen state of His own beloved Israel. Sorrowful in the extreme was their present state. Their land desolated, their city destroyed, and all their pleasant and beautiful things laid waste, themselves captives in a foreign land,— the subjects and servants of a stranger-king,the once queen-like nation might be said, without a figure, to sit solitary, clothed with the sackcloth of mourning, in place of the bridal attire of joy. Israel had fallen,―fallen from her high and palmy state, to the lowest depth of degradation and woe, and fallen "by her iniquity," by departing from her trust in her faithful God ;- by deserting the service of her rightful Lord;-by exchanging the pure and spiritual worship of the Lord God of her fathers for the corrupt idol-worship of the neighbouring nations. Lonely exiles from their father-land, a land originally not their own, but made over to them as a gift from God, her children were now reaping the bitter fruits of their apostasy, and "drinking the cup of trembling" to the dregs.